About this publication
Most organisations start with the technology. They buy the platform, pilot the AI tool, stand up the data lake. Governance arrives later, usually after something has gone wrong.
Before Data & AI, comes Governance is my own writing on data and digital governance. It is written for directors and senior leaders who are accountable for these decisions, and for the advisers who brief them.
Each piece follows the same path: here is what keeps happening, here is why, and here is what to do about it. Each ends with a question or a choice you can take to your next meeting.
Who I am
I’m Malcolm Fraser, a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute and Governance New Zealand, based in Nouméa. I’m also a doctoral candidate at the University of Otago, researching A Governance Framework for Data Collaboratives.
The order in the title is one I’ve seen hold up over four decades of practice, from factory-floor telemetry and controls, through software and systems integration, to working with boards and advising government agencies, commercial organisations and not-for-profits across Asia Pacific and beyond.
Governance isn’t the layer you add once the platform or the AI use case is running. It decides whether it should run, and on whose terms.
My vantage point is the Pacific, where small institutions, shared data and cross-border partnerships put governance questions under a bright light. The patterns I see there show up in larger organisations too, usually with more room to hide.
How I write
From practice. What I write comes from field experience. Where I describe a pattern, I label how well it is supported: early observation, approaching confirmed, or confirmed pattern.
Composite, never identifiable. I don’t name colleagues, quote conversations or describe situations you could trace to a person or programme.
Free. No paywall, no subscription tiers, no sales pitch.
What this is not
This is my own community-of-practice work, done in my own time. It isn’t organisational communications and it doesn’t speak for my employer. Nothing here is an offer of services.
Read, reply, push back
The most useful response to a piece is a question, a disagreement, or an example from your own organisation that doesn’t fit what I’ve described.
Reply to any post, or start a conversation on LinkedIn.
